lacking in them. If this sort of attitude is right, then we might as well give up all serious Bible study, for words have

no meaning.

Others see the part and imagine it is the whole. There are systems of Bible interpretation that envisage all the

redeemed being blessed in future on the earth, while another interpretation finally puts all the redeemed in heaven

and has no place for an earthly kingdom. Both are wrong and have only a part of the Divine picture. What they

need, and what we all need, is to have our minds stretched and enlarged to grasp more of the fulness of God's

mighty plan of redemption and reconciliation that touches the highest heavens as well as the earth beneath (Col.

1:20), finding its final fulfilment in `new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness' (2 Pet. 3:13). The

understanding of many of us is clouded because of our poverty of conception. We have a God that is too small, and

a divine purpose that is little more than parochial.

When Paul urged Timothy to keep in the forefront of his mind the object of receiving God's approval, he was

told this was bound up with `rightly dividing the Word of Truth' (2 Tim. 2:15), showing that the way we handle and

interpret the Word of God is of supreme importance, and God's future assessment of our Christian testimony and

whether we meet Him with joy or shame, depends upon our obedience to this command. We believe that if we carry

out the guiding principles before enunciated, we shall be doing just this, and in doing so, we are allowing God's

Word to mean exactly what it says, and every statement of Scripture can be taken in the setting in which we find it

It then ceases to be the word of man, but is in truth the Word of God. The critic may say that such a system is

`divisive', that it `chops the Bible up into unrelated parts' and destroys the organic unity of Scripture. But rightly

applied, this is not true. One could retort that the critic who recognises the division of the Old and New Testaments,

has chopped the Bible into halves.

When we `rightly divide the Word', we shall recognise the basic doctrine of redemption and the final Headship

of Christ that binds together the callings of the redeemed and the spheres of blessing, as well as noting the

*

distinctions that God has made. Ephesians 1:10 looks forward to a future dispensation of the fulness of the seasons

when all heaven and earth are gathered under the headship of Christ, expressing a unity that will be unbreakable and

eternal. `United yet divided' expresses the position, and to ignore one and hold to the other is unscriptural and can

only lead to imbalance, and a partial or clouded view of God's great goal. It is quite pathetic to see how some

expositors in their over-anxiety to overthrow `dispensationalism', erect a great man of straw, someone's particular

brand of dispensational teaching, and then proceed with great show to knock it down, and imagine when they have

done this that the dispensational approach to the Scriptures has been proved erroneous and overthrown. This is

usually the attitude of the amillennialist, but amillennialism is a denial of the historico-grammatical system of

exposition, at least as far as prophecy is concerned and, as such, it is an unsound and inconsistent method of study,

with its allegorisation, opening the door wide to human opinion and error. A further example of this can be seen in

the amillennial treatment of the two resurrections of Revelation chapter 20. The first is held to be spiritual, taking

place at the salvation of the sinner; the second, the general physical resurrection of all the dead of all time. It is well

to note the comments by Dean Alford on this passage in his Greek New Testament, and he had no leanings toward

the dispensational viewpoint:

`It will have been long ago anticipated by the readers of this commentary, that I cannot consent to distort its

words (that of the passage) from their plain sense and chronological place in the prophecy, on account of any

consideration of difficulty, or any risk of abuse which the doctrine of the millennium may bring with it. Those

who lived next to the apostles, and the whole church for 300 years, understood them in the plain, literal sense,

and it is a strange sight in these days to see expositors who are among the first in reverence of antiquity,

complacently casting aside the most cogent instance of consensus which primitive antiquity presents. As regards

the text itself, no legitimate treatment of it will extort what is known as the spiritual interpretation now in

fashion. If, in a passage where two resurrections are mentioned, where certain psuchai ezesan at the first, and

the rest of the nekroi ezesan only at the end of a specified period after the first - if in such a passage the first

resurrection may be understood to mean spiritual rising with Christ, while the second means literal rising from

*

See The Unfolding Purpose of God, chapter 15, by the same author.